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Thursday, 4 July 2013

Can a democratic state be racist? Of course, says Der Tagesspiegel's Andrea Darnbach
- who argues that a nation with a past like Germany's must face up to
the latent racism lying at the heart of German officialdom.Last week's report by the German Institute for Human Rights left no
doubt as to its views on racism in the police force. Rules which allow
police to stop and search people on the basis of their appearance are
not only against EU law, said the institute, but "compromise human
dignity."

In the aftermath of the report, journalist Darnbach wrote that Germany
must stop feeling offended and come to terms with persistent
institutionalised racism:

The human rights agency has thrown light once again on to a dark corner
of political culture, which is the persistence of racism in the actions
of the state.

The institute examined the Federal Police Act – which regulates the
force's remit and actions – and established that at least one paragraph
illegally allows police to observe and watch people on the basis of
their appearance. It is only a couple of words in a whole law. But it is
illustrative.

It can be controversial to accuse a democratic country of racism,
especially Germany of all countries. Not least because the wording of
the law in question looks so harmless: In the text it only says that
officers should rely on their “experience” - or rather their gut
feeling.

No police officer is explicitly told that they should concentrate on
stopping and searching black people. But that appears to have been the
result.

German officialdom always likes to see itself as the model pupil of its
own history, the story of how murderous race hate ended in genocide. To
admit that even seventy years later the country is not completely
finished with that process means that perhaps we have not learned our
lessons quite as properly as we should have.

Racism also exists in democracies

But why? If we were talking about another issue, nobody would deny that
even democracies which, on the whole, function very well are not immune
to unsavoury developments more characteristic of dictatorships. The
lively global debate about the USA's spying program proves exactly that
point.

But perhaps it is equality – always brutally destroyed by racism – which
is so fundamentally a democratic principle, but one that democrats find
can hardly bear being presented with the glaring reality so far from
the ideal.

That's what happens with racism, even more so when it's not individual
racism that's the issue, but official, “institutional” racism on the
state's account.

Those who do not want to put a name to abuses are certainly not able to
remedy them. The NSU murders could have almost certainly been prevented
if racist bias by the investigating authorities hadn't prevented racism
from being recognised as the motive.

Instead racism continues to be routinely trivialised, even though it's a
danger for the whole society. And it weighs down on the lives of
individuals: people who have to explain to their children why they are
always asked to show their IDs, or why they cannot get a flat because of
their skin colour or why they are always pulled off the train in full
view of everyone.

Racism may be a serious accusation. But it's much worse to do nothing about it.